Poetry of James Paul Gee

She lays herself down (cycle)

She lays herself down on the desert sand.
Black vultures sit with her,
Experts in death who know when
To summon majesty to take her.

They cry to the sky to call the wild beast
To its duty
To kill her body
So they can clean the bones.

She does not shudder at the roar.
She does not seek escape.
She offers her throat to the bite
And her body to the embrace.

The vultures prepare the body
Digest it into dirt and dust
So the ancient beetle can carry it away
For the restoration of life.

Her bones gleam white against white on the white desert floor.
But they will darken soon
Chewed and abraded to dirt and dust as well.
The wind will finish the job in a flurry of sand.

Her soul
Shimmers
Like a blue mirage
Of life-saving water
To draw another seeker hence.

*******

II.

Parched
He is drawn
Pulled and dragged
To the light bright shimmering water.

He trudges on
Over dunes
And more dunes again
Until it all seems a cruel mirage.

But then he arrives
Suddenly
Surrounded
By a light blue light.

He can feel something has happened here.
There is a faint smell of violent blood
Shimmering
A faint hint of peace as well.

This violent peace is only here.
Everywhere else is vacant lifeless desert
All about him
Closing in.

Yet life
And death
are everywhere there,
Concealed asleep in the searing heat.

He cries out
“I feel you, I sense you
Dear dear one,
Who laid yourself down.”

Suddenly there are other presences there
Black things
Odd things
And then it comes in a wave and a roar.

Majesty
Accompanied by a raven
Who says,
“You are not prepared.”

*******

III.

The squat old woman glimpses
The wisp of blue
Smoke
Water
Apparition
On the horizon.

Slowly
Like a desert tortoise
She comes
To the place
Of blue
Shimmering above the desert floor.

She lowers herself down
In stages
Slowly
To the sand
And sits
Still.

Silence
Emptiness
Death
Peace
Denial
Surround her.

An ancient beetle crawls
Up
Stops
And says
“Welcome,
Welcome back.”

The old woman cannot speak.
She comes from the time
Before speaking
But not before understanding.
She nods.
And the beetle waits.

She waits.
The blue shimmers.
A bare wisp.
The blue congeals
Into a substance.
She takes the soul
Away.

The beetle is left alone
And walks on.

*******

IV.

The young professor scans the high-desert grass,
Searching for pronghorns.
Some people call them antelopes.
But they have been here in the New World forever.
They are antelopes no more than javelinas are boars.

They run faster than anything on the continent,
Flying across the grasslands,
Easily outrunning wolves and coyotes.
They are perfect speed.
No living thing can match them.

But a dead one can.

Evolution dictates that nothing runs fast
Save to escape a predator seeking to run faster.
Nothing learns to flee that is not chased by something not easily outrun.
The pronghorn is indeed chased,
But chased by a spirit now.

A fleet and powerful cat chased it once upon a time,
Shaped its miraculous speed,
In order to receive the gift of its own agility in turn.
The spirit cat is gone now from the flesh,
Betrayed by a slow halting primate with a spear.

The pronghorn is alone,
With nothing left to chase it,
To kill it,
To honor it,
To meld with it in a blizzard of speed.

In the wilderness the professor comes upon an old woman
Accompanied by a young girl.
Perhaps they are Native Americans,
Though only the girl looks it.
The old woman looks like the grass itself.

She is yellowed and sallow,
Aged and ancient as a creek bed,
Withered, shrunken,
Burned black by the sun.
Her face betrays no race.

The professor is startled.
But feels he is the intruder.
“I am here to find pronghorns,
To celebrate their speed,
To watch them run for play.”

The little girl says, “They do not play,
They run in sorrow and in waiting
In sorrow for the death of majesty,
In waiting for its return,
So the dance of life and death can begin again.

The old woman does not speak.
But a vision enters his mind as if a gift from her.
In his mind the pronghorn bounds
As fast as an eye can see
Pursued by a majestic blur.

The pronghorn says
“This is what I was made for,
This is what I was born for
This is what I live for
This is how to die.”

When the majestic cat
Chases the majestic deer,
They are one.
No time for fear,
Only time for life.

The professor responds,
“No one has ever seen this cat,
This ghost
Who runs so fast.
It is only scientific speculation.”

The girl says,
“Mother has seen it many times in the flesh.
She is here
To take its soul
Away.”